Christianity Today has changed a bit since the first issue was published in October 1956. The look is different. The feel is different. We’ve chosen a different font.
One of the first editors of Christianity Today noted (with a hint of despair) that no one cares about fonts. He wasn’t wrong. Design elements—the font, or the width of the margin, the quality of the printer’s ink, and a million other near-invisible things—are meant not to be noticed directly but to give the magazine a “feel.”
If you do notice, and dig in to the history of Christianity Today’s design, one constant becomes clear: The magazine has been carefully updated, adjusted, and redesigned, time and again, to fulfill the promise of Today. CT strives to speak to this present moment, and that means sometimes changing how things look. It means, sometimes, caring more than normal about fonts.
Watch our free online workshop “A redesign case study: Christianity Today magazine.”
1956 – Editor Carl F. H. Henry, planning the first issue of Christianity Today, complains that people think fonts are boring. The first issue uses Deepdene and Fairfield, which Henry considers modern typefaces.
1963 – CT’s first redesign is done by ad man Harvey Gabor, who will go on to direct the iconic commercial “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” Gabor says CT requires something “intangible” and “a style and momentum all its own.”
1966 – CT prints its first image on the cover—a globe surrounded by flames, all in grayscale. Inside, the only editorial image is a cartoon. Later the same year, the magazine experiments with covers in color.
1976 – Color photos begin to appear semiregularly on CT covers. The 20th anniversary issue features Billy Graham in a yellow polo shirt. Inside, an editor examines the way evangelicals are “seizing the public imagination” in the “Year of the Evangelical.”
by Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today
Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
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